Wenzhou
Encyclopedia : W : WE : WEN : Wenzhou
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| Administration Type | Prefecture-level city |
| Area (Land) | 11,784 km² |
| Area (Sea) | 11,000 km² |
| Coastline | 355 km |
| Population | 7,777,000 (2006) |
| GDP | ¥16,475 per capita (2003) |
| Major Nationalities | Han |
| County-level divisions | 9 |
| Township-level divisions | Unknown |
| Mayor | Shao Zhanwei (绍占维) |
| Area code | 577 |
| License Plate Prefix | 浙C |
Wenzhou (Simplified Chinese: }}}; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a prefecture-level city with a population of 873,000 in southeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It borders Lishui to the west, Taizhou to the north, and looks out to the East China Sea to the east.
Wenzhou was a prosperous foreign treaty port, which remains well-preserved today. It is also known for its emigrants who leave their native land for Europe and the United States. They are very enterprising folks who start restaurants, retail and wholesale businesses in their adopted countries.
Administration
The prefecture-level city of Wenzhou currently administers 3 district, 2 county-level cities and 6 counties.
- Lucheng District (鹿城区)
- Longwan District (龙湾区)
- Ouhai District (瓯海区)
- Ruian City (瑞安市)
- Yueqing City (乐清市)
- Yongjia County (永嘉县)
- Pingyang County (平阳县)
- Cangnan County (苍南县)
- Dongtou County (洞头县)
- Wencheng County (文成县)
- Taishun County (泰顺县)
History
Wenzhou, also known as Yongjia (or Yung-chia) has a history which goes back to about 2000 BC, when it became known for its pottery production. In the 2nd century BC it was called the Kingdom of Dong'ou. Under the Tang Dynasty, it was promoted to prefecture status and given its current name in 675 AD.
Throughout its history, Wenzhou's traditional economic role has been as a port giving access to the mountainous interior of southern Zhejiang Province. In 1876 Wenzhou was opened to the foreign tea trade, but no foreign settlement was ever made there. In 1937–1942 during the war with Japan, Wenzhou became an important port due to its being one of the few Chinese ports still under Chinese control. It declined in the later years of the war but began to recover after coastal trade along the Zhejiang coast was re-established in 1955. Today Wenzhou remains the chief economic, political and cultural center of southeastern Zhejiang province.
Economy
Wenzhou exports foodstuffs, tea, wine, jute, timber, paper, Alunite (a non-metallic mineral used to make alum and fertilizer). Alunite is quite abundant here and sometimes Wenzhou claims to be the "Alunite Capital of the World". Its main industries are food processing, papermaking, and building materials, with some engineering works producing mostly farm machinery. From the 1990s, low-voltage electric applicances manufacturing became a major industry in Wenzhou, with some of the large private enterprises setting up joint ventures with GE and Schneider. Since 1994, exploration for oil and natural gas has commenced in the East China Sea 100 km off the coast of Wenzhou. Companies such as Texaco, Chevron, Shell and Japex have started to drill for oil but the operations have been largely unsuccessful.
Since the new government term starting in 2004, the local government has initiated a brand-new development strategy of inviting investment from international market, which is dubbed as "Number 1 Project" of the city. It is a particularly bold endeavour for Wenzhou, especially with the backdrop of declining FDI in the national level.
Language and culture
Wenzhou natives speak Wu dialect Chinese, like the people of Hangzhou and Shanghai. Geographic isolation and an admixture of Southern Min Chinese speakers from nearby Fujian Province, however, have caused Wenzhou speech to evolve into a dialect that has been described as "notoriously eccentric."
Due to both cultural and geographical remoteness and its lack of natural resources (land, minerals, etc.), the Chinese central government has left the people of Wenzhou relatively on their own. Away from the center of the political and economical stage, its people are more independent, self-reliant, and generally more business oriented. Hence, when China switched from its so-called socialist economy to its so-called capitalist economy in the late 1980s, its people adjusted well to the new system and gained a huge advantage from it.
The people of Wenzhou are equipped with business sense and a commercial culture more dominant than anywhere else in China. Wenzhou has two economic characteristics: it was the first to launch a market economy, and it has the most active and developed private economy in China. In the process of developing its economy, its people have survived adversity, with little positive help from the government.
Notable people
- Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (303-361), sage of Chinese calligraphy
- Xie Lingyun 謝靈運 (385-433), poet
- Wang Shipeng 王十朋 (1112-1171), statesman and writer
- Ye Shi 葉適 (1150-1223), philosopher, most important figure of the neo-Confucianism Yongjia School
- Liu Ji 劉基 (1311-1375), great strategist and statesman of the Ming Dynasty
- Zhang Cong 張璁 (1475-1539), Ming Dynasty prime minister
- Sun Yirang 孫詒讓 (1848-1908), scholar and educator, early dicipher of the Oracle Bone Script
- Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸 (1898-1958), writer and scholar
- Su Buqing 蘇步青 (1902-2003), mathematician and educator, president of Fudan University
- Zhu Chen 諸宸 (1976-), female chess international grandmaster and world champion
External links
- [Government website of Wenzhou] (in Simplified Chinese)
- [Wenzhou from "My Home Town" project]
Prefecture-level divisions of Zhejiang
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| List of Zhejiang County-level divisions |
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